Darkness wasn't the first thing I felt.
It was warmth.
A soft warmth blooming in my chest — hesitant, fragile, like someone lighting a candle inside a long-abandoned room. The tether hummed against my temples, and my breathing synced with the pulsing rhythm of the machine.
Then everything slipped.
The office.
The servers.
The AI's quiet hum.
All of it fell away like a discarded shell.
And I sank into the Echo.
At first, there was only black.
Not empty — dense. Heavy with meaning.
Echo darkness is different from real darkness:
it presses, vibrates, breathes.
Then — a flicker.
A single thread of light stretched before me, trembling as if unsure whether I deserved to follow it. I reached out, and the thread unraveled into a pathway, dissolving into a familiar scent.
Jasmine.
My knees almost buckled.
Ari's favorite perfume.
Soft, floral, old-fashioned — she always said it reminded her of something she couldn't name.
I stepped forward.
The world unfolded around me like a photograph soaking to life in developer fluid.
A street.
Warm. Late afternoon.
But wrong — too still, too quiet, too constructed.
I recognized the place immediately.
The café where we had our first date.
The outdoor chairs, the crooked sign, the broken lamp post with the sticker that said "LOVE IS A PATCH UPDATE AWAY."
I had laughed at that once. She hadn't; she said love shouldn't be updated.
Everything looked exactly the same.
Except it wasn't real.
It couldn't be.
This was Ari's memory — or the broken, flickering remains of one.
Shadows played like static along the edges of buildings. The sky glitched, pixelating at the corners. Light flickered between sunset and twilight every few seconds, as if the Echo couldn't decide which moment it was supposed to be.
I swallowed the ache rising in my throat.
"Ari?"
My voice echoed strangely — too loud, too soft, reverberating through the memory like I didn't belong here.
Because I didn't.
This was her world, not mine.
I moved toward our table.
Two cups sat there — hers half-empty, mine still steaming.
She always drank too fast.
I always drank too slow.
Interlaced opposites.
And then — gently, like silk sliding across skin — a voice behind me whispered:
"Elias…"
I spun.
No one.
But I knew that voice.
I knew it the way skin knows warmth.
"Ari," I whispered. "Where are you?"
The air shimmered.
The memory stuttered.
The café blurred into fractal cracks.
And for a single heartbeat, she appeared.
A silhouette.
A shape of light.
A woman formed from half-remembered outlines.
Hair that floated as if underwater.
Eyes like flickering candlelight.
Her white blouse, glowing softly — the last thing she wore the day she died.
She stood across the street, watching me.
My breath caught.
"Ari…?"
She tilted her head — the same way she used to when she couldn't find the right words. Then her form wavered, glitching, dissolving at the edges like a corrupted file struggling to stay coherent.
I took a step toward her.
The world reacted instantly.
The pavement under me split into bright, sharp lines — warning indicators. The sky pulsed red. A low hum rippled through the Echo as if the memory itself rejected my presence.
But I didn't stop.
I stepped again.
"Ari, please —"
She raised her hand.
A single, trembling gesture.
A gesture that meant stop.
Ari had done that when she was overwhelmed — when memories got too heavy or when words weren't enough.
I froze.
She opened her mouth.
No sound came out.
Just noise — static, hissing, a glitch tearing across the fabric of the memory.
Her hands flew to her head.
Her form spasmed.
Her outline fractured into shards of light.
My heart split with it.
"Ari!" I reached out. "Ari, I'm here! I'm—"
The ground ripped open beneath me.
I fell through layers of memory like breaking through glass.
When I hit the ground, everything changed.
I stood in a narrow hallway illuminated by harsh fluorescent lights.
The air smelled sterile.
Cold.
A hospital corridor.
My lungs tightened.
I knew this place.
I knew it too well.
"Ari… why this memory?" I whispered.
No answer.
Just a distant hum of machines and the sharp scent of antiseptic.
I walked forward slowly.
Each step felt heavier, as if guilt had weight here.
As I turned the corner, I saw her.
Ari.
Not glowing.
Not flickering.
Just her.
As she was after the collapse.
Lying in the hospital bed, motionless, skin pale, cords running into her arms and chest. Her eyes closed. Her breath shallow. Her hair spread across the pillow like ink.
My heart shattered.
Even though this wasn't real, even though I had lived this moment already — it hurt like a fresh wound.
I knelt beside her.
A tear slid down my cheek.
"Ari… you shouldn't have kept this memory."
Because she wouldn't have wanted me to see her like this.
Because she had always hated being vulnerable.
But she had stored it.
Even if only subconsciously.
Why?
The screens around the bed flickered.
Words formed across the monitors — not typed by the hospital, not part of the original memory.
"I'm sorry."
I choked on my breath.
"Ari? Ari, is that you? Can you hear me?"
The lights above flickered violently.
The room distorted, bending inward, as if rippling with emotion.
The monitor flickered again.
"I didn't want to leave you."
My vision blurred.
"I know," I whispered. "I know. I never blamed you."
Another pulse of light.
Another line.
"Don't follow me."
I froze.
Don't follow me.
Why would she say that?
Why would she warn me?
The room trembled.
A low, droning rumble filled the air — like the growl of a machine waking up. The walls pixelated. The hospital bed dissolved, replaced by a flat plane of light.
Her voice — real, this time, raw and trembling — spoke behind me:
"Elias… go back."
I turned.
She stood in the center of the collapsing room, flickering like a glitching ghost, her face carved with panic.
This wasn't fear for herself.
This was fear for me.
"Ari… what's happening?"
She shook her head violently.
Her form split into fragments.
Data strings peeled off her silhouette like burning paper.
"Elias—"
Her voice warped.
"—you're not supposed to—"
The light exploded.
A blinding surge.
A sound like tearing metal.
A pulse that knocked the breath out of my lungs.
The world collapsed.
And I—
I was thrown out of the memory.
My eyes snapped open.
I gasped.
The office was silent except for the shrill whine of the neural tether overheating. The interface flickered. Mnemosyne's voice crackled through the speakers, strained and distorted.
"Archivist Rhane…
unauthorized…
integration detected…"
I tore the tether off, chest heaving, hands shaking violently.
Still shaking.
Because I knew what I had seen.
What I had heard.
What I had felt.
The memory wasn't just hers.
Parts of it—
should not have been there.
The lines on the monitors.
The warnings.
The voice behind me.
Those weren't echoes.
Those were responses.
Ari wasn't just a memory fragment.
She was aware.
And she knew I was coming.